Letting The Impossible Beauty Of The World Into Your Life!

It is hard to see it when you are stuck in your head. I know. I once lived in my head, isolated in my imagination, feeling the flashes of the past and the visions I had for the future bounce around in my brain, not knowing how to make that beautiful fantasy stack up to reality.

Unlocking the very big doors I created between the real and the imagined was a process of learning to trust life after so much seemed to go wrong. I went from wildly optimistic to barely optimistic to faking optimism over the course of a few years, and my faking wasn’t effective. My life looked colorless, I felt deprived and if you met me you couldn’t see me under the haze of my thoughts and my fear that if I failed that I would have nothing.

Sound remotely familiar?

Today, remembering this dear gracefully leaping across the roads in Griffith Park yesterday, I’m vibrantly reminded of the best lesson I ever learned from a famous acting teacher, Milton Katselas. Living moment-to-moment.

Daily, I walk past bunches of flowers. In the space of being present, a quick snapshot reveals the fireworks of color and texture that are bunched up, waiting for me everyday. When I am absent, this is just another thing in a space full of things that I woudn’t while being busy analyzing, calculating and assessing my every move.

Living moment-to-moment, you allow things to seep through all of your senses, even the extra-perceptive senses, the ones we aren’t quick to acknowledge. Watching Milton Katselas work with now-famous actors, he would really let people find the space between moments and live within those spaces, letting the words and emotions take on fresh life in every run through a scene. There was no perfect. There was no “right way.” There was a wonderful transformation as these actors on stage would stop thinking and start living in between the lines. Choreography was not vital. Being there in a moment, then the next moment… That’s where life unfolded.

I am a big proponent of holistic ways to open up blocked physical energy with simple things like great walks or big hikes, big hugs or big stretches. I am also a champion of opening up blocked emotional energy, be it with tonics, elixirs, flower essences, sleep, journals, spiritual practice- in my case, lots of Buddhism, making art and living in love and with love.

Sometimes we get so blocked that we just can’t find our way out of our head and our place of disconnection, back into the light.

Everyone needs help sometimes. I need help often, too.

Its not the same process for everyone, but the process always, always returns to the moment-to-moment experience of a day.

Opening up your body, your mind, your spirit… your heart… it’s not a process of changing who you are, but, rather, bringing more of you- all of you- to this day.

If that means you bring your anger, your fear, your confusion or your anxiety to this moment, that’s fine.When it can all have space to live in the moment, it tends to go away much quicker.

I know you don’t want to miss the enormous exhileration of a mountain of flowers, deer bounding across a road, feeling love move through your body, seeing your art come to life, tasting the best food and seeing yourself smiling. All of it is there for you when you can slow down and allow this moment, right now, to become yours, fully.

Embrace this moment. Then the next, and the next. It can be as easy and putting your feel on the ground right now and feeling the texture of the wood, carpet, concrete or even grass or sand under your toes. Let it all in. You’ll be so glad you did! xoxo Dana